George Linus Cobb (1886-1942)
was a prolific composer of ragtime, including both
instrumental compositions and ragtime songs.
Included in this online essay is a brief overview of
Cobb's life as a composer. I have also included a
list of 210 known compositions by Cobb (and 5 still
to-be-determined compositions), the most extensive
listing of his compositions by anyone to date. Also
included is free online access to the sheet music to
169 of his total of 177 pre-1923 compositions,
resulting in over 95% of his pre-1923 compositions
being available on this site. In addition to being a
composer, Cobb was also a columnist for Melody magazine,
published by Walter Jacobs Inc, who was also his
major publisher for his compositions (see below for a sample of Cobb's
"Just Between You and Me" column from the magazine).

There is surprisingly little
biographical information easily available on George
Cobb. In They All Played Ragtime (or at
least in the third printing of that book that I
have), Cobb does not even get an index entry and is
not discussed in the book (although several of his
compositions are listed in various parts of the
book). As such, very little is known about Cobb's
life, compared to say Jack Yellen, one of Cobb's
major partners who wrote the lyrics to at least 25
of Cobb's compositions; by way of contrast, Jack
Yellen was voted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and
has a much higher profile than George Cobb. The
information on Cobb's life that follows is taken
largely from either That American Rag (Jasen and Jones:2000) or Rags
and Ragtime: A Musical History (Jasen
and Tichenor:1989). Ragtimer Frederick
Hodges presented a
seminar on George Cobb in 2005 to the West Coast
Ragtime Society and more recently updated his
research on his website in an online blog post from
July 2012 entitled "George
L Cobb: The Tuneful Yankee." For now,
I set out below some basic facts about the life of
George Cobb (with section 5 below
containing a list of some areas where additional
research on the life and music of George Cobb is
needed):

George Linus Cobb was born August 31, 1886, in
Mexico, New York, and died in Brookline,
Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1942. Research by
Bill Edwards suggests that Cobb was resident in
Mexico, New York at least through 1900 (Edwards:2007).

Cobb entered the School of Harmony and
Composition at Syracuse University in 1905 (at the
age of 19): Jasen and Jones
(2000:228). Apparently, Cobb then lived in Buffalo
on graduation where he won a local competition in
1909 for his composition "Buffalo Means Business"
(below).

Research by Bill Edwards hints at the
possibility – without verification at this stage –
that Cobb may have served in the military prior to
World War I given his dearth of publications
between 1910 and 1912 and other factors (Edwards:2007).

Jasen and Jones (2000:229)
surmise that it was likely around this time that
Cobb hooked up with Jack Yellen, who turned out to
be Cobb's main lyricist (Yellen apparently worked
as a reporter at the Buffalo Courier),
although Jasen and Jones report that Yellen left
for the University of Michigan shortly after Cobb
and Yellen had completed a few of their first
compositions together.

"Rubber Plant" is a testament to Jacobs's good
eye for rags, and it is also proof of Cobb's
attentiveness at the Syracuse School of Harmony.
Its harmonic surprises come thick and fast, as
in silent movie music, yet it is not a showoff
piece. It is a satisfying rag of middling
difficulty, and, like most of Cobb's rags, it
sounds harder to play than it is.

Cobb and Yellen continued
their partnership in Tin Pan Alley and had a hit
with their first attempt there: All Aboard
for Dixieland (below)
(Jasen and Jones: 2000:229).
Jasen and Jones document a number of hit songs
penned by Cobb and Yellen (all available below)
and note their success in writing songs over their
first few years in Tin Pan Alley where a number of
their songs were performed on Broadway and where
others, such as Alabama Jubilee (below), were heavily
recorded.

Cobb was married in the 1910s
to Mary (last name unknown), but she disappears by
1930. He likely moved to the Boston area in late
1916, and a Cambridge address shows on
his WW1 draft card (Edwards:2007).

Jasen and
Jones (2000:230) note that in September 1916
Walter Jacobs hired Cobb to be a staff writer and
columnist for Jacobs's the Tuneful Yankee.
However, they also note that Jacobs failed to
require that Cobb exclusively publish with Walter
Jacobs. Although Walter Jacobs was Cobb's main
publisher by a long shot, Cobb did shop his
compositions around and created a number of hits
for publishers such as Will Rossiter with Cobb's Russian
Rag(below).

His father, Louis, was a
real-estate broker, continuing in that career
perhaps to his death in the 1920s. Cobb was likely
living with wife and parents in 1920, his father
still a broker (Edwards:2007).

Jasen and Jones (2000:231)
state that Cobb used the pseudonym "Leo Gordon" on
two of his new pieces published in The Tuneful
Yankee "so he wouldn't seem to be hogging
space in the magazine." Although they do not
identify which two pieces, they likely are
referring to Georgia Rainbow (1916) (below) and Bone Head
Blues (1917) (below).
However, my research also uncovered the following
four less well known compositions by "Leo Gordon":

Cobb was the arranger for The
Blacksmith Rag, composed by "Rednip."
Research by Luigi Ranalli (Ranalli:2007),
suggests that Rednip is in fact a musician by the
name Harold Pinder (with "Rednip" being "Pinder"
spelled backwards) and not a pseudonym for Cobb.
"Rednip" also composed At the Shimmee Ball
(1919) that was published by "Pinder and Company."

Research by Bill Edwards
suggests that Cobb was living in Somerville, MA,
in 1930 with his mother. His occupation is listed
as a publishing salesman, consistent with the fact
that he was not heavily composing at this time but
was instead likely concentrating on sales or
distribution on behalf of Walter Jacobs (Edwards:2007). By 1940,
Edwards' research has Cobb living in Brookline,
MA, according to two copies of his World War II
selective service card.

Publishers: Cobb's
most frequent publisher of his music was Walter
Jacobs, who published at least 130 of Cobb's
compositions in one form or another. However, as
was noted by Jasen and Jones
(2000:230), Walter Jacobs did not sign Cobb to an
exclusive contract; as a result, Cobb was free to
publish elsewhere, something which he did. One of
Cobb's early publishers, prior to Walter Jacobs,
was Charles I Davis, who published at least 16 of
Cobb's compositions. Another major early publisher
was HC Weasner & Co of Buffalo, New York, who
published at least 22 of Cobb's compositions.
After these publishers, the next most frequent
publisher of Cobb's music was Will Rossiter (11
compositions). After that, Cobb spread his
compositions around, publishing with the following
publishers in descending order of the number of
publications published by each (with the number of
compositions published by that publishers
indicated in parentheses following the publisher's
name):

Jerome H Remick (6)

Chas E Roat Music Co
(Battle Creek, MI) (3)

Harold Freeman Music (2)

M Witmark & Sons (2)

Ted Garton Music Co
(Boston) (2)

Vinton Music (Boston) (2)

Self (Cobb) (1)

Bell Music Co (1)

Hub Music Co (1)

Leo Feist (1)

Metropolis Music Co (1)

Oliver Ditson (1)

Seidel Music Pub Co (1)

Shapiro, Bernstein & Co
(1)

Sherman Clay & Co (1)

Louis C Snyder (1)

Remaining publishers unknown

Songs: Of the 210 Cobb compositions
listed on this page, 83 appear to be songs (i.e.,
compositions with vocals). Although Cobb appears
to have penned the words to approximately 22 of
these songs, he heavily relied on Jack
Yellen as one of his major vocalists on at
least 25 of these songs. The next most prolific
vocalist on Cobb compositions appears to have been
Robert Levenson (11 songs), with the remaining
vocalists penning much fewer songs (with the
number of compositions indicated in parentheses
after the name of each vocalist):

Jack Mahoney (3)

J Will Callahan (2)

Irving Crocker (2)

Phil Volz (1)

WL Beardsley (1)

Lucius Pratt (1)

WR Williams (1)

Richard Whiting and Gus Kahn (1)

HC Weasner (1)

Bob Wyman (1)

Will Garton and Leo Wood
(1)

Treve Collins (1)

W Max Davis and Eddie
Elliott (1)

Aaron Neiberg (1)

Norman Leigh (1)

Instrumentals: A rough
count suggests that 124 of Cobb's 210 compositions
listed below are instrumentals. Of these 124
instrumentals, Jasen and Jones (2000) list 25 rags
(including three under the pseudonym of Leo
Gordon). The remaining instrumentals below fall
into the categories of marches, one or two-steps,
novelettes or mood pieces and waltzes (there
appears to be 13 instrumental waltzes).

Walter Jacobs's The Tuneful
Yankee and Melody magazines were a
major source of many of Cobb's
compositions provided below in section 3. The
Tuneful Yankee commenced in January 1917 and
was a monthly magazine similar to the Ragtime
Review, published by Axel Christensen out of
Chicago (see my separate
essay on the Ragtime Review). Each
monthly issue of these magazines typically contained
a selection of short articles on ragtime or popular
music, along with usually 3 or 4 compositions
(typically by composers who had published with
Walter Jacobs) and numerous ads (once again,
typically for Walter Jacobs's publications). By the
end of 1917, it appears that Walter Jacobs was
proposing a contest to come up with a new name for
the magazine, and in January 1918, the magazine was
relaunched as Melody magazine. Cobb wrote a
monthly column called "Just Between You and Me,"
which was formally commenced in the February 1918
(Vol II, Number 2) edition of Melody,
although it looks as though previous columns, which
were unattributed, were likely also written by Cobb
due to the same acerbic style deployed in the
earlier columns.

Left: Sample cover from the
February 1917 The Tuneful
Yankee (Walter Jacobs).

Left: Sample "Just Between You
and Me" column by GeorgeCobb from the
February 1918 Melody
magazine (Walter Jacobs) in which Cobb
critiques piano compositions written
and submitted by readers of the
magazine.

Set out below in chronological
order is a complete list of known compositions by
George Cobb. Ragtime songs (i.e., compositions with
vocals) are identified with "peach-colored"
backgrounds, whereas instrumental compositions are
identified with "yellow" backgrounds. Jasen and
Jones in That American Rag
(2000) list 22 compositions by George Cobb and
3 by Leo Gordon (a known pseudonym of Cobb). Those
25 compositions listed by them are identified below
by the code "TAR" as part of the bibliographic
information and include the date of copyright
registration as identified by Jasen and Jones (where
copyright was in fact registered, which did not
happen for all of these 25 compositions).

The sheet music in the tables
below that was sourced from The Tuneful Yankee
or Melody magazine was digitized from a
microfilm version of those magazines; hence, the
quality of those particular digital versions is not
perfect but the music is quite readable.

Readers who have copies of any
of the public domain Cobb pieces identified below
but not available are encouraged to provide me
photocopies or digital scans of those pieces so they
can be added to this site.

Note: A
piece with this title – Nautical
Nonsense – is listed in TAR but I wonder if
that listing is in error and whether the
authors intended Nautical Toddle
(immediately below) instead.
It is unlikely that Cobb would have
composed and titled two pieces in the
same year with such unusual but similar
titles. I have listed both pieces for
now, however, since I have no proof that
Nautical Nonsense does
not exist.

The foregoing compositions by
George Cobb all appear to have been published prior
to January 1, 1923, and, as a result, are "out of
copyright"" and in the public domain.

The pieces that follow below, to
the contrary, all appear to have been published
since January 1, 1923, and may still be protected by
copyright. If I have time, I hope to more closely
investigate the copyright status of these pieces.
For example, Walter Jacobs, as publisher, appears to
have properly renewed copyright registration for
some of the pieces below 28 years after the initial
copyright was registered. These pieces where
copyright was properly renewed would presumptively
be protected by copyright until 95 years after the
publication date. However, it is not entirely clear
to me who owns the copyright in many of these
post-1923 compositions where copyright was properly
renewed. For example, Jasen and Jones in That
American Rag (2000:244)
indicate that the Walter Jacobs company was taken
over in 1943 "by a Hollywood firm, but the Walter
Jacobs imprint remained on the music."
Unfortunately, the authors do not indicate which
Hollywood firm took over Walter Jacobs.

On a practical level, it is
likely that copyright has been abandoned in most of
the post-1923 Cobb publications due to the lack of a
commercial market for these compositions. However,
legal speaking, courts will generally require some
active step by a publisher to abandon its copyright
and mere inactivity is not necessarily sufficient to
prove an intent to abandon copyright.

Alternatively, if some of the
post-1923 that are still covered by copyright have
not been legally abandoned, I wonder if an argument
could be made that some of the works may have been
orphaned if there has been no clear chain of title
over ownership of the copyright over the passing of
time (but this is pure speculation on my part). The
concept of "orphaned" copyrighted works has
recently been studied by US lawmakers. In
Canada, by way of contrast, there are already procedures
in place for a person to obtain clearance to use
orphaned works, although the Canadian system
is not without its critics since any license fees to
use an orphaned work operate as a tax and will not
likely provide any incentives to creators.

Various Internet sources suggest the following
titles are compositions by George Cobb, but I have
not been able to confirm the existence of these
compositions through bibliographic entries or other
methods of verification:

There are a number of additional
avenues for additional research to be done on George
Cobb, including:

Syracuse, NY: a search
of the archives at Syracuse University for any
fonds on George Cobb and a search for student
newspapers or music clubs from the era circa 1903
to say 1908 when Cobb was likely there; a search
of city directories from that era.

Buffalo, NY:a
search of Buffalo, New York, newspapers for
mention of Cobb's "Buffalo Means Business"
prize-winning song and a search of local archives
and city directories for information on Cobb.

Boston: a search of
city directories, archives and public and
university libraries for information on Cobb and
Walter Jacobs and the various musical periodicals
published by Walter Jacobs; also search for
obituaries for Cobb (date of death: December 25,
1942).

Analysis of music: I
have spent so much time compiling Cobb's music, I
have not had a chance to analyze it. There are
several areas of work that could be done in this
regard:

I suspect most of Cobb's
compositions were written first for piano with a
number of them being arranged for orchestra or
band; it is possible, however, that some of his
music was written specifically for orchestra or
band with piano parts included. Further work
could be done to catalogue which of Cobb's
compositions have been arranged for orchestra or
band and to analyze whether those compositions
were first written for piano or not.

Jason and Tichenor (1989:174) describe Cobb's rag
as spanning three phases – Popular, Advanced and
Novelty. Given the foregoing extended list of
over 200 compositions, there is likely further
room for more detailed analysis of his
compositions in light of these three phases.

Music in context: Cobb
appears to have been a clever person with many
allusions in his music to contemporary life and
to classical compositions (e.g., Torrid
Dora, Asa's Toddy).
Researching the antecedents and inspirations for
some of his compositions would likely produce
interesting research and insights into his work.